Author: Jessica Avery

Just me, a grown reader, considering starting a collection of children’s books that make me smile because how FREAKING cute is this book? Just look at that little baby black cat, I can’t stand it. Her name, by the way, is Pepper, and she’s the blackest black cat. Which makes it hard to make friends. Maybe it’s because everyone thinks black cats are cursed. Or because she is a witch’s cat. But all Pepper wants is to find some friends who won’t be afraid of her, and who will like her for just who she is.

I think I’m going to make it a mission next year to read more middle grade horror. And at the top of my reading list has to be Claribel A. Ortega’s spooky, sweet MG novel about best friends fighting to save their home. Set during the Halloween season, Ghost Squad is about Lucely Luna and her best friend Syd, who have to band together with Syd’s witch grandmother and her adorable cat to fight a host of malicious spirits that Lucely accidently unleashed on St. Augustine. Any chance that Lucely, Syd, Babette, and (the aptly named tabby cat) Chunk have to save the town relies entirely on the bonds between them.

Representing the home team this week is Maine author Gillian French and her 2019 YA horror novel, The Missing Season. Set amidst an intense Halloween prank war played out every year by the teens of Pender, The Missing Season is about what happens when that old town story about a monster in the marsh turns out to be more than an urban legend. The Mumbler is a monster, who comes back each October to steal children from the town of Pender. Or at least that’s what Clara’s new classmates tell her, not that she believes them. Still, as Halloween approaches, even Clara can’t deny that there’s something…off about Pender. Something that maybe can’t be dismissed as nothing more than a Halloween myth.

Speaking of cute covers, how adorable is the cover of Literally Dead? If you’re looking for some genuinely creepy horror to celebrate the holiday, I highly recommend this new collection of 19 short stories that pay homage to all our favorite parts of the Halloween season! Featuring works from well known horror writers like Lee Murray, Gwendolyn Kiste, Sara Tantlinger, Jonathan Maberry, and more, Literally Dead is the perfect book for a cozy Halloween evening at home, tucked up with a bowl of candy that you bought for yourself because dammit we’re adults and we deserve Reese’s peanut butter pumpkins.

Many of you are probably familiar with the first book in VanderMeer’s Southern Reach series, but if you haven’t read it yet I highly recommend adding Annihilation to your reading list. Especially if you’ve only seen the movie thus far. No judgement! I watched the movie first, too. But the book is so different and so gorgeous and weird that I honestly suggest forgetting everything you think you know about the story and picking it up. Our narrator, the Biologist, is one of four women who form the 12th expedition into the mysterious Area X, looking for answers about what it is, where it came from, and what it wants. Inside Area X they find a world in which biology has exploded into strange new forms of production, mutation, and growth, not just in the world around them but in their own bodies, as Area X creeps beneath their skin and transforms them into something…new.

Lagoon is one of those genre straddling books that probably leans more towards science fiction in style, but that possesses plenty of horror to make readers of either genre happy. After all, it’s impetus is an alien invasion. First Contact. And all the horrors that ensue whenever the human race encounters something new that frightens it. Lagoon follows this fraught encounter between humanity and extraterrestrial life, as a massive object falls from the sky and lands in the ocean off the coast of Lagos. The descent of this impossible object unites the lives of three strangers — a marine biologist, a rapper, and a soldier — as they band together to save their country and their world.

And last but absolutely not last, 2014 brought us Stephen Graham Jones’ brilliant horror collection, After the People Lights Have Gone Off. If you have read one of Jones’ novels before, but have yet to read any of his short fiction, you are missing out. And this collection of stories, which won the This Is Horror award for Short Story Collection, and was nominated for both a Bram Stoker Award and a Shirley Jackson Award in the same category, is definitely where you should start. Fifteen tales of the supernatural and mundane turned terrible, both rendered in equally horrific detail.

I loved this novel. It was such a fantastic dark fantasy take on Jane Eyre that was genuinely creepy at times! Fans of the original will recognize a few beloved lines and familiar scenes, but even when paying homage to her source text, Blackwood has created something wholly original and unique. Andromeda is a debtera without a license, making her little better than an eternal apprentice in the eyes of the world. If she wants to continue to work, she’s going to need a patron. So when Magnus Rochester hires her sight unseen to cleanse his house of the Evil Eye, despite her lack of licensure, Andromeda decides to take her one chance at a future and run with it. Be she could never have predicted the degree of horror lurking inside of Magnus’ home, nor the youth and charm of her new employer. With both her life and heart in danger, Andromeda will have to work fast if she hopes to save Magnus from the curse that threatens to tear them apart.

Now, The Hacienda was clearly inspired by du Maurier’s Rebecca, which really makes it Jane Eyre’s grandchild, I guess? But it’s definitely THAT Gothic novel. Also, to be clear, any novel that mentions the love interest’s mysteriously dead wife right in the synopsis is not a novel that’s going to go well for it’s lead character. But Beatriz can’t be blamed for the choice she made. Her father was executed in the overthrow of the Mexican government and her home destroyed, so when a handsome and wealthy Don proposes, she takes her chances with financial security and an estate tucked safely away in the countryside. Of course, when is Convenient Husband’s Country Estate ever really the safe haven that a Gothic heroine expects? San Isidro, for instance, is filled with strange voices, strange goings on, and plenty of helpful, familial gaslighting. Cue the entrance of the young (and probably handsome) priest who comes to the rescue, and you’ve reached peak tropey Gothic delight.

You know, right up there with “mysteriously dead wife,” I feel like “forbids you from entering his house entirely” is probably not a good sign for the longevity or happiness of your marriage. Unless of course you’re Jane Shoringfield. As far as she’s concerned, the fact that Augustine Lawrence is wealthy, charming, and best of all, a recluse who doesn’t even want her to set foot in his house, makes him the perfect model husband. Until, that is, Jane ends up stranded on his doorstep on their wedding night. And what she finds inside Augustine’s house throws all her careful planning into disarray. So much for best laid plans, because there is something very, very wrong in Lindridge Hall.

I’ve said before how much I love collections as one of the best ways to get familiar with an author’s work— their style, their voice, the themes and images that inspire and inform their work. The synopsis of We Are Here to Hurt Each Other promises 12 tales of a “dark and bloody world” and wow does Ashe deliver. Grotesque and disturbing, the collection explores the depths to which a person can be driven and the limits to which they’ll go. These stories will sink their claws into you and good luck getting them out again. We Are Here to Hurt Each Other tops out at 152 pages, making it the perfect choice for a short autumnal afternoon.

I’ve been a fan of Cynthia Pelayo since I first read Loteria, and after the heartbreaking beauty that was Into the Forest and All the Way Through, I leapt at the chance to read her newest book. Crime Scene (out October 13th) is a story told in narrative verse in the model of an epic poem. Starting with Report 0001, readers follow the journey of a hero, Agent K, in the quest to solve a girl’s brutal murder. We all know how the story goes, a missing young woman, a gruesome death, another crime to be investigated but too often left unsolved. But Pelayo challenges our complacency with this narrative, urging us, through Agent K’s eyes, to invest ourselves in the case, to let ourselves feel the tragedy, the grief of the loss, the painful hope that maybe, someday, there will be answers. At 128 pages, Crime Scene is a short read, but a devastating one.

You might have noticed that Eric LaRocca is a frequent flyer on this newsletter, for a couple of reasons: 1) Eric’s work is honestly some of the most unique, disturbing, delightfully queer horror that I’ve had the joy of reading, and 2) They are an amazingly prolific author. I am honestly in awe. But also delighted by how frequently I get to add a new LaRocca to my TBR! They Were Here Before Us is the newest novella — a “novella in pieces” — and it’s a series of unnerving vignettes that share a thematic heart, forming a single story of death, bodily destruction, and love. I’ve had the chance to read it and it’s amazing. Odd, dark, disgusting but beautiful — I definitely recommend ordering a copy, and at 104 pages, it’s the perfect book for a busy fall day.

But reader be duly warned: I also recommend heeding the content warning at the beginning for “graphic depictions of dismemberment, disembowelment, interspecies necrophilia, heavily implied interspecies love affairs, and art-as-torture.”

I can’t believe I’m finally going to get my hands on Hollow. I’ve been making heart eyes at this graphic novel since I found out about it, and I honestly can’t wait. I just know it’s going to join Mooncakes and Blackwater to form the perfect, autumnal, cozy graphic novel trifecta of my heart. Izzy Cane has just moved to Sleepy Hollow with her family, and she can’t understand why the people she meet keep having such a bad reaction to her last name. And it only gets worse when she bumps into local teen celebrity Vicky Van Tassel of THE Van Tassels. Vicky, who is stick to death of the legend and her family’s part in it. But now the horseman rides again, and regardless of how Vicky and Izzy feel about the legend— or each other— if they want to survive they’ll have until Halloween night to break the curse that drives the Horseman to put an end to the Van Tassel line.

When Liz Rocher returns to Johnstown, Pennsylvania, it’s not to reminisce about her past. The mostly white town wasn’t a comfortable place to grow up as a Black girl, and it’s still not somewhere she prefers to spend her time. But her best friend is getting married, so for one weekend Liz commits to putting up with Johnstown, and its inhabitants, for the sake of her friend. When the other woman’s daughter, Caroline, suddenly vanishes during the reception, however, Liz finds herself in the middle of a town-wide search for the missing child, confronted with memories she’d almost forgotten. Caroline isn’t the first Black girl to go missing in Johnstown. It happened when Liz was young, and now its happening again. In an effort to get to the bottom of the town’s secrets and bring Caroline home, Liz begins researching Johnstown’s past, only to find that the deeper she digs the darker the truths she uncovers.

Stephen Graham Jones (of The Only Good Indians and My Heart is a Chainsaw fame, among many, many other excellent works of horror) has teamed up with illustrator Davide Gianfelice to create a new comic series about time travel and murder that you won’t want to miss. Set in 2112, Earthdivers is about a world decimated by an ongoing climate crisis, where civilization has collapsed and what little remains of humanity has all but given up. Except, that is, for a small band of Indigenous survivors, who make an incredible discovery hidden deep in the desert: a portal through time, and the means of changing the world as they have known it. So they send one of their own to the past, tasked with a dangerous mission to kill the man responsible for it all. To kill Christopher Columbus.

As many of you might remember, 2013 was kind of smack in the middle of a massive wave of “-apocalyptic/viral plague/zombie plague/quarantines and remnant societal enclaves” fiction. And among that outpouring of books, was Sherri L. Smith’s Orleans, about a post-apocalyptic Gulf Coast, devastated by storms and sickness. The initial outbreak of Delta Fever lead to the entire Coast being quarantined, and now, years after the fact, the rest of the country has given its inhabitants up for dead. But life still exists inside the quarantine zone, condensed into warring factions struggling for survival. When Fen’s tribe is murdered for their virus resistant blood, she and her tribe leader’s newborn child are the only two survivors. Determined to get the baby out of the quarantine zone to the Outer States, where she can have a better life, Fen teams up with a rogue scientist, Daniel, who’s found himself trapped inside Orleans and who may just posses the secret to its salvation. But only if the three of them can survive the perilous journey to the quarantine wall and make their escape.

I mean, does this book even need an introduction? Yes, friends, 2013 was the year that blessed us with one one of the strangest, most frightening Christmas books you will ever read. Ho ho hell no. The unforgettable villain of the story, Charlie Manx, is a monster who preys on children, stealing them away in his Rolls-Royce Wraith (the one with the titular NOS4A2 plate) and transporting them clean out of this world to that hidden park of terrors and amusements: Christmasland. The only child who ever escaped him was Vic McQueen, who shares his remarkable ability to slip outside the world. After her narrow escape, Vic grew up determined to forget that Manx ever existed. But when Manx returns and kidnaps her son as revenge, Vic has no choice but return to the past she tried to bury. To take up her bike and follow the hidden roads, all the way to Christmasland.

I realize that not everyone considers The Ghost Bride a horror novel because it’s not explicitly, “make you afraid of dark doorways” scary. But I think there’s always a place in the horror genre for darker books that aren’t overtly scary, but are still horror thematically, tonally, etc. (Though for those of you who prefer a good scare, I’ve heard that they upped the creep level in the Netflix adaptation.) The Ghost Bride is about a young woman, Li Lan, who’s limited prospects of a decent marriage result in her receiving a very strange offer from a wealthy and powerful family that normally wouldn’t consider Li Lan a suitable wife for one of this sons: the Lims need a Ghost Bride. It’s a rare practice in which a young woman is married to a deceased son of the house whose spirit is believed to be restless and haunting the family. In return, Li Lan will trade her uncertain future for a guaranteed a home— but security comes at a price. With every night that passes, Li Lan is drawn further and further in the frightening world of the dead that her betrothed inhabits, and unless she can unravel the secrets at the heart of the Lim household, she may find herself trapped in the afterlife forever.

Jessica. Really. Multiple vampire books two weeks in a row? Okay, but listen: I kind of love the idea of a vampiric viral plague leading to a vampire quarantine zone that’s basically one big blood orgy dance party that humans are too stupid to stay away from. Literally so stupid that they will walk through the one way door into Coldtown, knowing that— alive or not— they’ll never be coming out again. Of course, the quarantine isn’t optional for the vampires themselves, and it isn’t optional for people who have been bitten and exposed to the “virus.” Like Tana and her ex, Aidan, who were attacked at the same sundown party. Left with no choice but to make their way into Coldtown in order to protect their friends and loved ones, the two find themselves in a strange new world where consumption— extravagant, excessive, and fully televised consumption of all kinds— is the rule of the land.

Okay, so technically this book came out August 30th, not in September, but I’m including it, darn it. Because how cute is this collection of scary stories?! As you might guess, these tales of monsters and monstrous things are meant to help the unwary child who’s stumbled into a vampire’s nest make it out again without becoming a blood-flavored Capri Sun. Tell a vampire one good scary story every night and you might just buy yourself time to escape! Or so is the premise of Stories to Keep You Alive Despite Vampires, with its collection of stories about everything from ghosts and werewolves to a haunted mannequin and…a killer phone? So grab your copy, get to reading, and you just might make it till morning.

If you are unfamiliar with the Rick Riordan Presents line of middle grade books, I highly recommend checking out this fantastically diverse collection of fantasy and sci-fi novels, more than a few of which definitely count as horror! In Serwa Boateng’s Guide to Vampire Hunting, twelve-year-old Serwa is the descendent of generations of slayers tasked with hunting the Adze, shapeshifting vampires that posses the minds of their victims. But when her parents set out on a dangerous hunt to track down the obayifo who destroyed their home, rather than getting to hunt along side them, Serwa finds herself parked in some small town in Maryland with her aunt and cousin to live a boringly ordinary life until her parents get back. But when an adze turns up in Serwa’s new school, she’s suddenly on a hunt of her own, trying to turn her classmates in to monster hunters before everyone she knows becomes a vampire’s dinner.

Oops, not me sneaking a third new release into this week’s newsletter, but yes! The Vanquishers does indeed come out tomorrow, so be sure to add it to your list. Malika “Boog” Wilson is growing up in a world that has finally eradicated vampires after years of being hunted and besieged by the undead. They were wiped out by the Vanquishers, vampire hunters who Boog and her friends would give anything to be like, even though there are no more vampires to fight. In fact, most of her classmates’ families have given up on anti-vampire measures altogether, no longer relying on the precautions that prior generations counted on to survive. Except, that is, Boog’s parents, who still insist on early curfews (well before sunset) and wreaths of garlic. It’s embarrassing! But when one of her friends goes missing, Boog starts to reconsidered her parent’s insistence on outdated practices, and very seriously consider the possibility that vampires may not be as extinct as she’d been lead to believe.

Coming out at the end of this month is Vampiric Vacation, the second book in Kiersten White’s delightful Sinister Summer series! Dracula fans add this one to your list, because aside from featuring some familiar faces (sort of), it sounds honestly adorable and I can’t wait. Following the events of first book, Wretched Waterpark, the Sinister-Winterbottom siblings are off to the next stop on their odd (very odd) summer adventure: the Sanguine Spa. The owners, Mina and her sister Lucy (who has some unusual but definitely still human and not at all vampiric qualities) are watched over by their ominous guardian The Count, who helps them to manage the eerie spa. Suspicious that the spa might have something to do with their missing parents, the siblings set out to investigate under the guise of a scavenger hunt. But when Wil starts manifesting some very unsettling symptoms of a condition that starts with a V, the twins quickly realize that something even stranger than expected might be happening inside the walls of the Sanguine Spa.

I have been really looking forward to this book! You know I love an anthology, and the TOC for Our Shadows Have Claws is packed with talent. Fifteen original short stories offer monsters galore, every thing from vampires to cannibals, ghost-witches and wolf-gods to death itself. So creature feature lovers be sure to add this dark, fantastical anthology to your reading list! Featuring the work of authors like Courtney Alameda, Ann Dávila Cardinal, Claribel A. Ortega, and many more, Our Shadows Have Claws is a celebration of Latine mythology from some of the most exciting voices in YA horror and fantasy.

If you’re looking for some of the most haunted real estate in horror, you need to read Darcy Coates. She always manages to touch on the things that scare me most. Gallows Hill is a story as much about family secrets and greed as it is about creepy tunnels and undead creatures. The Hull family has always owned the Gallows Hill Winery, and thrived off its success. But beneath the surface of their good fortune is a dark truth that generation after generation has been forced to conceal — and for which they’ve had to pay a heavy price. Margot Hull was sent away from Gallows Hill as a child, but when her parents die suddenly in their sleep, she finds herself on the doorstep of a home she barely remembers. A house full of dark secrets, bitter memories, and — quite possibly — a curse that seeks to take her life as well.

A retelling of Stephen King’s Carrie through the lens of racism and bullying at a small Georgia high school, Jackson’s The Weight of Blood is the latest in a storied horror tradition of “proms you do not want to attend.” Madison has been passing for white her whole life, on the insistence of her abusive father. But when she is revealed to be biracial, the bullying that normally plagues Maddy’s high school existence goes from bad to worse. The ensuing public fallout of a bullying video gone viral has the student body scrambling to repair their school’s reputation, but their plan for an integrated prom won’t be the solution they expect it to be. Not when Maddy’s classmates have decided that she still has to pay for her lies. Not when Maddy still has one secret left to to hide.

I love horror and horror-themed graphic novels! Particularly when they’re witchy. Coven is about a young woman with magical powers, but Emsy doesn’t care about training as a fire elemental and growing her magical skills. She left that behind her along with her family’s coven and her dreary hometown in upstate New York. But when a spate of mysterious murders that are clearly magical in nature put her family in harms way, Emsy has no choice but to leave behind her friends and her girlfriend in California and trade surfing for magical training. Mastering the magical skills she tried to ignore may be Emsy’s only chance to find the murderer before her own family meets a terrible end.

I’m already a huge fan of N.K Jemisin’s frequently horror-infused fantasy novels. I remember starting The Fifth Season for the first time and being amazed (and delighted!) at how dark it was. So of course I had to include The Killing Moon — which I haven’t had the pleasure of reading yet — on my list of 2012 backlist titles for this week. Set in yet another stunningly constructed fantasy world, this time inspired by ancient Egypt, The Killing Moon is about a group of people called the Gatherers, priests whose job it is to take magic from the sleeping minds of the populace. Magic they then use not just to heal, but also to judge and execute those citizens of Gujaareh that are deemed to be corrupt. Until the day Eihru, one of the Gatherers, discovers a conspiracy to use the Gatherers’ justice to murder innocent dreamers instead.

Scott Sigler’s specialty is combining action-driven horror with terrifying monsters to create stories that you’ll have a hard time putting down, and Nocturnal is no exception! Bryan is a San Francisco homicide detective who is stripped of his badge when he gets caught up in a shadowy conspiracy behind a string of recent murders. Unwilling to give up on the case, Bryan follows the threads of the conspiracy deep into the underground ruins beneath San Francisco and discovers a hidden world of monsters who feed upon the living. The closer he gets to the truth, the more Bryan learns about his connection to these strange creatures. It also becomes more and more evident that he may be the only one who can stop them.

Kendare Blake’s Anna duology is a fantastically creepy YA horror series, which begins with the well-known Anna Dressed in Blood and concludes in Girl of Nightmares. The series is about the vengeful ghost of a teenage girl, Anna, who becomes attached to a living boy — and ghost hunter — named Cas.

Spoilers follow in the blurb, so if you haven’t read Anna Dressed in Blood yet, continue at your own risk!

In the sequel, Girl of Nightmares, it’s been months since Anna vanished into Hell, leaving Cas behind to live his mortal life. But Cas still sees Anna everywhere he looks, asleep or awake. He knows that Anna is in trouble, and that whatever is happening to her in Hell is a gruesome fate she doesn’t deserve. Which means Cas has only one option: walk into Hell and get Anna back.

Another exciting series conclusion, Blackout brings Mira Grant’s zombie apocalypse series, Newsflesh, to a thrilling end. In Feed, a deadly virus infects the planet, wiping out society, and two bloggers try to get to the dark truth behind the infection. The story concludes in Blackout when, 27 years after the Rising, Georgia and Shaun Mason find themselves embroiled in a conspiracy far larger than either of them could ever have imagined. Now the clock ticks down as they and the remaining staff face down an increasingly bizarre and dangerous barrage of obstacles, from mad scientists to the remnants of a government gone awry, in their ongoing quest to find the truth.

Okay, so technically the subway itself cannot be blamed for a creepy cult snatching people out of abandoned subway terminals. Or for any sinister, ancient evils lurking beneath (far, far beneath) the New York City streets, putting strange and unknowable plans into motion. But that scene at the beginning of the novella, when Monique’s girlfriend Donna disappears and there’s just the big, dark, echoing void of the tunnel where she used to be — that’s scary. And the uneasiness of that scene, the pervading sense of wrong, is something Piper carries through the whole book, right up to it’s wormy, unnerving finale. I love this book so much, and oh did you hear: Off Limits Press has announced two sequels, one in 2023 and one in 2024!

Of the three books on this list, The City We Became is the only one that doesn’t take place almost entirely underground. BUT, there is a rather memorable scene featuring a giant worm (oops, secondary newsletter theme, apparently) made up of old, decommissioned subway cars, and I felt that at the very least that earned The City We Became an honorary mention on a list of reasons why maybe sometimes it’s just better to stay aboveground. Jemisin’s cosmic horror novel about five New Yorkers who represent the soul of the city and must come together to protect it is probably one of the most innovative books I’ve read in recent years. And with the sequel, The World We Make due out in November, now’s a great time for a re-read.

You know what’s a terrible idea? An all-night underground rave in an abandoned subway tunnel. Call me a stick-in-the-mud if you want, but I’m prefer to think of myself as horror educated. I refuse to be the “don’t go in there” girl, and that definitely includes parties in dark tunnels, with music so loud that nobody could here me, say, being brutally killed and disemboweled in a nearby tunnel. That’s what happened to poor Julie, and she’s just the first when the subway party at the heart of Danielle Vega’s Survive the Night starts to go seriously off the rails. (Ba dum tish). When Casey stumbles on Julie’s dead body and sounds the alarm, she and her friends find themselves trying to escape the subway, only to find every exit barred. Someone doesn’t want them getting out.